This invention generally relates to drawers or trays such as used in organizing and storing a variety of smaller items. The drawers or trays can be removeably held within a storage cabinet which is provided with pairs of opposed, yet parallel, drawer glides. A storage cabinet or modular cell unit, specifically adapted for storing the drawers or trays is disclosed in my copending application Ser. No. 791,323. This specific modular cell unit is not, however, essential; other similarly adapted storage cabinets could function with the drawers or trays of this invention. The modular cell, drawers, or trays can be employed in a hospital setting, for example, to store a patient's personal belongings, clothing, or medicines. The present invention comprises a storage or supporting member which can easily be converted from a pull tray to a drawer with associated pull handle.
Any modern institutions, such as hospitals, hotels and schools, which must provide short term storage and related living facilities to members of the public face the problem of meeting a variety of different needs without maintaining a huge supply of different cabinets, dressers, etc. Such independent products and subsystems, in conflict with each other, are expensive to obtain and to store. Also, particularly in hospitals where sanitary procedures and controls are a major concern, it results in the practice of overcompensation to balance the unsanitizable character of many equipment structures. This group of "unsanitizable" structures include most furniture, professional equipment, transporting devices, containers and storage units of a larger size. All surfaces, without exception, should and need to be clearly accessible for removal of contaminated material and for sterilization. There should be no seams, no cracks, no interior grooves, no hinges and no unsealed shell interiors penetrable by air or liquid flow in order to preserve a sanitary atmosphere. With rare exception, present structures do not lend themselves to disassembly for proper cleaning.
In such institutions, it has increasingly become apparent that the visible physical characteristics of the room or surroundings can have a profound impact on the psychological outlook of the occupant. It is therefore beneficial to provide comfortable and uncluttered furnishings that still fulfill the sanitary requirements.
In order to be aesthetically pleasing to the occupant and yet maintain extreme functionality, a system of unitary modular cell units has been constructed. Each individual cell unit is capable of storing a variety of items of various shapes and sizes in an extremely aesthetically pleasing manner. The cell units or cabinets can be provided with a plurality of drawers or pull trays, as desired. These support devices are constructed of a hard, resilient, and durable plastic which can be submitted to heat and sanitarization without deterioration. The units are molded as one solid piece thereby eliminating unsightly seams. Additionally, the elimination of seams tends to substantially decrease the degree of impurities maintained in a structure after sterilization. The elimination of seams also tends to increase the component's structural strength. The pull trays or drawers are adapted to slide in and out of the front of a storage cabinet. These storage drawers or pull trays can be "mixed & matched" to provide a variety of cabinet configurations to meet the variety of needs. Quite obviously, the flexibility of a cabinet to take on a variety of functional embodiments is a tremendous advantage.
By allowing a pull tray to be easily converted into a drawer, the cabinet or modular cell which carries the trays or drawers can be provided with a variety of frontal closures, as desired. For example, if the pull trays are used in an ordinary cabinet containing drawer support guides, then a hinged door or tambour-type door could be used to seal the cabinet from potential contamination. Alternatively, the pull trays can be converted into drawers by means of a handle which snaps onto the front of the pull tray. If the drawers are used in a cabinet, then the handles serve the dual function of facilitating removal of the drawers from the cabinet in addition to eliminating the need for an independent frontal closure.